China may not have been on the UK’s initial human rights sanction list – but pressure on Beijing is building

The government appears to accept that years of assiduous cultivation of trade links may have to be scaled back, even if only temporarily

The much heralded first unilateral human rights sanctions by Britain focused on Russia, Saudi Arabia, Myanmar and North Korea. The country missing from the list was China, something repeatedly pointed out to Dominic Raab in the Commons.

All but three of the 20 Saudi officials on the UK list for their involvement in the murder of Jamal Khashoggi are already under sanctions from the US, as are the two Russians connected to the death of Sergei Magnitsky, and the two Myanmar military commanders accused of ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya. Two North Korean security departments, rather than individuals, are listed by Britain, but Washington already sanctioned senior members of the country’s hierarchy, including Kim Jong-un’s sister, Kim Yo-jong.

The foreign secretary stressed that this was just the first tranche of sanctions and other states, including China, will be examined for future action. It should be noted that Raab is not paying lip service – a former human rights lawyer, he has lobbied the British government to bring in such measures ever since he became a backbencher. Sergei Magnitsky’s widow, Natalia, and son, Nikita, watched the proceedings at the Commons from the Foreign Office at his invitation.

There is a head of steam building up among MPs and other public figures against the Chinese government over a range of issues including the crackdown in Hong Kong, alleged subterfuge over the start of coronavirus, the risks posed by Huawei and accusations of Chinese infiltration of business and academia. Beijing denies all allegations against it.

International reverberations over China are continuing. The head of the FBI, Christopher Wray, declared that China was now “the greatest long term threat to the US”. Wray also said that Beijing’s agents have been intimidating hundreds of Chinese nationals living in America to return home. The aim of “Operation Fox Hunt”, he said, was to stifle dissent at home and gave the example of one expatriate who was given the choice of either going back home or taking their own life.

Social media companies have stated that they were pausing handover of user data to Hong Kong police to be used for national security cases. Authorities warning about lack of cooperation and TikTok, the popular short video app, announcing that they would pull out of the city’s Apple and Google app stores within days.

Mike Pompeo said the US was considering banning TikTok and other China-made apps. “We are certainly looking at it, I can assure you the United States will get it right,” he told Fox News. India banned TikTok and 50 other Chinese apps last week after clashes in the Chinese border in which 20 Indian soldiers were killed.

The Australian government has warned citizens about travelling to China as “authorities have detained foreigners because they are ‘endangering national security’. Australians may also be at risk of arbitrary detention”. Relations between the two countries plummeted after Australia called for an independent international investigation into the spread of Covid-19, and Beijing retaliated by imposing duties on Australian imports. China was also been accused of carrying out a major cyber attack on Australian infrastructure.

Lawyers based in London have submitted evidence on behalf of Uighur exiles to the International Criminal Court (ICC) which justify, they say, an investigation into Chinese officials, including president Xi Jinping, for human rights violations, genocide and crimes against humanity. The Chinese government has repeatedly rejected the evidence of repression against the Uighur.

There has been a flurry of stories in the UK about public figures who have allegedly been suborned by the Chinese. One report, commissioned by an American filmmaker, Alan Duncan, to which the former MI6 officer, Christopher Steele, who produced the Donald Trump dossier, has contributed, name prominent people as being complicit, but it offers no evidence to back it up, and a number of those named have robustly denied the allegations.

Chinese influence is also the subject of a book published in Australia Hidden Hand which claims that an organisation, called the “The 48 Group Club”, which was set up in 1953, is the conduit for spreading Beijing’s influence. However, a number of supposed members, including Tony Blair and the former foreign secretary, Jack Straw, have insisted that they had never had anything to do with the club. The book’s publication in the UK has been held up for legal reasons.

China is going to be a focus of politics and foreign affairs in the UK in the coming days, with GCHQ’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) delivering its report on what new US sanctions relating to Huawei will mean for the company’s role in the UK’s 5G network.

The report is expected to say that the US measures will make the Chinese multinational’s involvement in the UK much riskier. The government is due to give its official response early next week, but it may come earlier.

The UK’s official position, to this day, has been that letting Huawei into the non-sensitive parts of the telecommunications network, will not compromise security.

That has been the constant mantra of Boris Johnson and Cabinet ministers. The defence secretary, Ben Wallace, reiterated this to the Commons Defence Committee last week and General Sir Nick Carter, the Chief of Defence Staff, confirmed it to the same committee on Tuesday.

The decision by Downing Street to allow the Chinese company into the network in January was taken against the wishes of allies, most strongly expressed by the US. Four months later the prime minister was saying that he wanted to reduce the company’s involvement to zero by 2023. The NCSC report will give the government an excuse to phase out Huawei from the network, and all indications are that is what it will do, possibly with a time-scale of 12 months for Huawei’s expulsion.

This will complete Johnson’s volte-face on Huawei, something which was always likely to happen. The Trump administration has repeatedly warned that intelligence sharing may be at jeopardy if the UK continued with Huawei and there may be ramifications for the trade deal between the two countries, a key selling point for Brexit.

The company and the Chinese government are, as to be expected, aggrieved. Paul Harrison, Huawei’s head of international media, UK, tweeted: “UK policy is being dictated by [the] Trump administration ... Shouldn’t the US respect a United Kingdom in the post-Brexit era being in a position to choose its own telecommunication strategy?”

But the issue is not going to go away even if Trump loses the presidential election in November. At this year’s Munch Forum, one of the main international security conferences, the key aim of the bipartisan US delegation was to stop the UK and other European states from letting in Huawei

Nancy Pelosi, the Democrat speaker of the House of Representatives, said choosing Huawei would be “choosing autocracy over democracy ... This is the most insidious form of aggression, to have that line of communication, 5G, dominated by a government that does not share our values”.

Lindsey Graham, the Republican senator, added: “Nancy Pelosi and Donald Trump are not going to have many dinners together, but if you ask them about the British purchase of Huawei they will give you the same answer. We are very firm in our commitment – Republicans and Democrats – that if you go down the Huawei road you are going to burn a lot of bridges.”

The Chinese ambassador to Britain, Liu Xiaoming, wanted to stress that banning Huawei would send “a very bad message to other Chinese businesses”. He and other Chinese officials had given similar warnings recently about economic consequences: Beijing may reconsider, it was suggested, it’s planned involvement in the HS2 high-speed rail network and building of nuclear power plants.

These statements have been presented as overt attempts at intimidation by the growing numbers of critics of the Chinese state. The British government, meanwhile, appears to be accepting that the years of assiduous cultivation of Beijing for trade may have to be scaled back, even if temporarily. The business secretary, Alok Sharma, has announced that Chinese involvement in the nuclear energy sector will be reviewed under new legislation on the national security implications of investment.

The UK is not the only country considering the security aspect of foreign, in particular Chinese, investment in strategic industries, including healthcare, in the wake of coronavirus pandemic. Measures have been taken by Canada, Australia, India, Spain and France. Margrethe Vestager, the EU completion policy chief, has suggested that member states should consider taking ownership stakes in companies threatened by takeovers, particularly by Chinese companies.

There will be pressure for punitive action for human rights abuses. Dominic Raab, introducing the sanctions legislation declared “those with blood on their hands, the thugs of despots, the henchmen of dictators, won’t be free to waltz into this country, to buy up property on the King's Road, do their Christmas shopping in Knightsbridge, or siphon dirty money through British banks”.

Uighur, Hong Kong and Tibetan civil rights groups and Chinese dissidents – as well as their supporters abroad – will be campaigning hard to ensure that this applies to guilty Chinese officials as well, whatever economic threats come from Beijing.